Tuesday, April 30, 2013

Well, it seems that the quietness of March was really just the calm before the storm, because come April it was back to business as usual, and a lot happened.

To kick things off, in late March, NPR advertised a segment produced by Andrea Seigel that would appear on This American Life, one of the broadcaster’s most popular programs. On April 1st, the program aired and the the 2nd part of it featured a talk on ASMR. The podcast was apparently up for download for the first week or so for free. Due to some complications involving finding the actual download or being able to listen to the episode on the website, IlseTheWaterdrops uploaded the part about ASMR to her YouTube channel.

After this show aired on NPR, there was an enormous amount of interest in ASMR, and the ASMR Facebook group very quickly went past the 5000 member mark within a week and a half. This was about the fastest rise in membership I’ve seen in quite some time, considering that before the NPR episode, at the end of March, we were barely over 4500 members. Now at the end of April, we’re over 5250 members!

On April 9th, we all celebrated the 2nd ever International ASMR Day. The International ASMR Day organisers even got a contest up and running with a very appealing goodie bag as a prize for 5 lucky winners.

A few new web presences have sprung up as well elsewhere, such as an Italian ASMR blog and ASMRtistsUK on Twitter. There’s also a website called ASMRLab.com, which just launched recently. This website purports to explain the inner workings of ASMR. You can follow them on Twitter at @ASMRLab.

A French journalist, Lénaïg, got a hold of ASMR Research & Support and wanted help in getting some “ASMR addicts” to get in contact with her. You can do so by reaching her over at Facebook. She was in the USA, in NY, in April, so if you missed the announcement over at our Facebook page, she will be available again in June in California to meet in person.

A spa writer named Michelle would like to get a hold of any ASMRtists in the city of New York, USA. If you reside in this area and are interested, please contact her at @michellejoni if you are on Twitter, or here if you’re on Facebook.

The other documentary is being worked on by Kate Mull of Mullberry Films. Kate would like to get in contact with anyone on the east coast of the USA, on or off camera. She’s based in Washington DC. So if you are interested in contributing, and are within commuting distance, don’t hesitate to contact Kate at katemull@mullberryfilms.com. The ASMR Film project, as it’s currently known, has a Facebook page and a YouTube channel, which had this video posted this month (which is also available over at vimeo).

And lastly, a third one, referred to as the ASMR Audio Documentary, has entered pre-production as well. That has a Twitter page.

A new ASMR app was released – the first for the Windows Phone operating system. It’s called ASMR Videos and requires Windows Phone version 7.5 and 8 to run. You can grab it for $1.99, and it only weighs about 2 MB. Judging by the options available on the page, there may also be a trial version.

That’s it for this month. As always, make sure to check back in a month’s time for the monthly update!

Monday, April 8, 2013

Hello and welcome to the March edition of the community update. A bit overdue again, but better late than never, right? This month was nowhere near as packed as last month, but there may well be a few things of interest.

The ASMR Facebook group hit 4500 members this month! I thought we would have gotten there sooner, but there was a drop in membership earlier this year. The good news is that number seems to have recovered. If you haven't joined yet, you’re more than welcome to, whether you experience ASMR or not.

The old poll on this blog closed in February, and I put up a new poll this month which focuses on the subject of insomnia. It will run until sometime in June.

A new app was released for Android, and it’s called Nail Tapping Lite, so anyone who goes weak at the knees (and everywhere else for that matter) for nail tapping should be in seventh heaven in no time. The current version is 1.23, and requires Android version 2.2 or later. It’s just under 1 MB in weight, so it’s very light. And of course, it’s free. The author claims that if there is sufficient interest in this lite version, then a pro version will be made with different surfaces, sounds, and scratching noises.

Two new articles appeared online. One was in the Gay Star News, which featured Maria Gentlewhispering and MaleSoothe. The other was in Impact Magazine.

Site Updates

These are just mini-updates that I was too lazy or busy to make a post for. They also list changes or additions that have been made to the blog, for interest's sake and to follow how the blog is developing.